Resistance training: How to stay strong as you age | Dr. Brad Schoenfeld

there's certainly people in their 60s 70s and even 80s that have more muscle than they had when they were 20 when they started resistance training later in life the key in my humble opinion is resistance training we actually carried out a meta-analysis on the oldest of old people 75 years and older who were sedentary and given resistance training there was marked increases in strength and these are short periods of time by the way we're talking 8 to 12 weeks welcome to Zoe science and nutrition where World leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health [Music] we learn how to keep our bodies strong as we age and why this is so crucial for a long and healthy life as early as our 30s and 40s our muscles start to shrink and we begin to lose strength this puts us at Major risk of Frailty Falls and fractures which in older age can even lead to death but there is good news this future is not inevitable I'm excited today to speak with Professor Brad schoenfeld Brad is a professor of exercise science at Lehman College in the Bronx New York and a world leading expert on building muscles and strength he's published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and written numerous Fitness books [Music] thank you for joining me today now we have this uh tradition on the show that we always start with a quick fire round of questions from our listeners um and we have some very specific rules Brad which we know are really hard for professors and the rules are you have to say yes or no or if you absolutely have to you can go as far as a one sentence answer so the first question do my muscles matter for my health yes if I have more muscles will I age more slowly as a general rule yes is strength training more important than cardio for health in my humble opinion yes I mean they're both I I think that does an injustice to the either or a question because they are complementary can weight training fight loss of bone density after menopause yes is it ever too late to start increasing muscle strength no all right and then finally and you I'm not you don't have to say yes or no what's the biggest myth about strength training that you often hear so many um women feel it'll make them too bulky athletes often feel that at all bind them up so they'd become less athletic uh that it takes a lot of time and I could go on and on there's just so many myths and none of those things are true none of them are true that's amazing well look I I look forward to unpacking this hi I hope you're enjoying the show so far if you're not already a regular listener I hope you feel that you might come back make sure to hit the Subscribe button and turn notifications on so you know whenever a new episode arrives and actually I've been really looking forward to this show personally I'm in my late 40s and I've been doing regular workouts with a trainer for about seven or eight years and that started because I was having this knee pain that I have for a few years I went to see a doctor and they just turned out which won't surprise you that apparently being as weak as a baby is not really helping anything at all um and what's interesting is exercising regularly has made me feel a lot better but one of the things that's really amazed me since I started at Zoe was discovering that regular exercise isn't just about sort of your joints and joint pain but actually could be having a broader positive impact on my health so before we dig into sort of actionable advice for our listeners I'd Love Actually just to start at the very beginning and understand and and I think the starting question for me is like how do our muscles work muscles attached to Bone the attendance and muscles shorten and lengthen so when they shorten they will bring bones up to carry out a movement uh and ultimately that allows you to ambulate to walk it allows you to pick up packages pick up your kids and allows you to do resistance training of course and so they're obviously essential right whether you're sort of like jelly on the floor without that description you just described it doesn't seem obvious why they would be important to our health providing their functioning enough that we can walk around so can you can you help how to unpack that for me the idea is is that when muscles begin to shrink and and they get weaker you do not have sufficient strength to carry out basic tasks and then you lose your functional Independence which is the primary reason that most people go into nursing homes to you know care facilities as they age uh it also cause or can lead to Falls hip fractures which often are fatal over time that mortality in those in elderly individuals who undergo Falls is we've close to 50 percent over a period of a couple years uh the functional disabilities of course are far-reaching as far as people's ability to be to carry out their activities on their own which not only is is really bad as far as their ability to engage in life but it's also also demoralizing mentally there's um aspects far beyond that that also important muscles store glucose so glucose of course is uh sugars they're the breakdown products of sugars and uh glucose is stored in mussels as glycogen um if your muscles start to shrink you have less ability to store glucose that tends to lead to diabetes to insulin resistance and diabetes also the functionality of the muscle themselves in terms of their insulin receptors their ability to get glucose into the muscles so it's not just the size and their ability to store a certain amount of glucose but it's their ability to take in the glucose and by the way you mentioned earlier also by pulling on the bones they help to strengthen bones or when they weaken they facilitate the decrease in bone density so there's just really all organ systems kind of can be affected by muscle I mean I guess I really want to follow up on that first part because I guess for many people listening to this this idea about having freedom for as long as possible and having good health for as long as possible is really Central um and I think I grew up just basically sort of understanding like as you get old you know you get wrinkly and you get weak and you stop being able to do things and that's just how it is and this is going to happen uh to you anyway to what extent um is that true as far as your muscles are concerned and is there anything that you know you can do now when you might be uh in your 40s or your 50s or your 60s or whatever that is going to affect that lust loss of muscles that is having this effect on losing Freedom as you get older yeah so the age-related loss of muscles called sarcopenia uh it's a actually now a diagnose medical condition um and uh it is not inevitable that resistance training is uh really the key now certainly other activities can help in that regard depending upon what they are but ultimately resistance training which can be defined as um the activities that promote muscle working against a given force and that can be accomplished through lifting weights is often thought of as the most common uh view of it but I mean it can be body weight exercise can push-ups uh body weight squats can be forms of resistance training you can use bands resistance bands you can use cable machines and other types of units so and it can be integrated and I mean there's yoga that involves resistance where they do various so anything where your body your muscles are working against a given force and to answer your question then if you engage in resistance training that substantially challenges the muscles over time you can not only Stave off sarcopenia but you can maintain more there's certainly people in their 60s 70s and even 80s that have more muscle than they had when they were 20 when they started resistance training later in life and and that have more muscle than 20 year olds do uh you know at a given age so um I would say that the key in my humble opinion into statement of sarcopenia is resistance training well I love that it's really positive right because I think often in this area everything is very depressing about the idea there's nothing going to do you're going to get older you're going to lose everything um and I think what you're saying is actually there's a lot you could do and it's it's not too late right if you didn't do any exercise in your 20s you're saying it's not oh that's too bad I love this idea of being in my 60s or 70s and having more muscles than I had in my in my 20s um there's I just want to interrupt and say there is research we actually carried out a meta-analysis on the oldest of old which were people 75 years and older who were sedentary and given resistance training and a meta-analysis is a pooling of all the studies on the topic um there was marked increases in strength and we see hypertrophy increases in muscle growth differences uh and these are short periods of time by the way we're talking 8 to 12 weeks again in 75 plus so these are minimum 75 years old could you explain a little bit because I think we sort of jumped over a little bit this link between doing this resistance training and preventing your muscles shrinking like why does that happen how does these two things fit together when you uh resist the strains you're applying Force to the muscles the forces that you're applying to the muscles are converted into chemical signals these chemical signals Carry Out protein synthesis they create more protein to the body to produce more muscle proteins which give you larger muscles when you are resistance training uh at a intense level you are challenging the muscles to a greater extent than when you are walking so will Walking be better than lying down all day of course so if you're just lying down all day if you're in if you're bedroom and then you get up and walk around you that will help to build some muscle but it's going to be very minimal the body only builds muscle to the extent that it's challenged to achieve greater muscle you have to provide a greater stimulus to it all the body cares about is survival so maintaining muscle is energetically expensive and we are still living in the bodies of our Paleolithic ancestors so uh the body doesn't realize that we can just go out for food whenever we want et cetera and it tries to be resourceful so to maintain muscle will be energetically expensive which would have a negative survival impact when you are Scavenging from in the historic days um so to bring this back home when you're lying down although let's say you're just not doing anything you're very inactive the body realizes it doesn't need this or thinks it doesn't need this extra muscle and it's energetically taxing to to keep it so why bother why would we need to maintain it if we're not going to be using it that is the use it or lose it principle when you're lifting weights that challenge the body because you might want to talk about you don't necessarily need to lift heavy weights but when you're lifting weights that ultimately become challenge challenging the body realizes that or thinks that it's needs to be able to maintain muscle to carry out these activities for survival and again everything revolves around what the body is perceiving as its survival needs it's really interesting because it's very similar to a lot of discussions we have about nutrition where also we have this problem where we sort of have these bodies that were built for this permanent fear of starvation and famine and we live in an environment where you know there's a Starbucks and a McDonald's on on every corner and it's all missed set and I think you're saying exactly the same thing about um exercise in our muscles that our body is worried about the the cost of supporting these muscles is constantly trying to shrink them whereas actually we'd really like to keep them really high and that sadly there is no magic pill and you've got to um do something that really puts them under strain if you want to keep the level of muscles that will keep us healthier correct and I would add too since you bring up nutrition that consuming protein is an important component as well that uh protein the consumption of protein is used the amino acids from it are used to build muscle so when protein is deficient uh you will at least up to a certain point you will compromise your ability to gain muscle but the most important factor is resistance training uh you can still build muscle even with quite sub-optimal protein intakes but you're not gonna it will compromise the magnitude of your gains and does that mean that as people age who think they should be um conscious about increasing the amount of protein they eat then they might be thinking about otherwise yeah so there's several things um number one there's something called the leucine threshold leucine is one of the amino acids essential amino acids and it's been shown to kind of kick start the uh uh protein synthetic process after resistance training and uh thus as you get older your body becomes less sensitive to leucine and that generally speaking you need to consume more protein in a given setting in a given sitting uh to hit your leucine threshold the most important thing is the resistance training again you will compromise gains to an extent but it's not like you won't get gains if you don't hit your leucine threshold but it is important that as older people get older you want to try to squeeze out as much as you can because it becomes harder to build muscle and Brad is that like a steady decline over time or is that more I have a 15 year old and he's basically putting on muscle by the week like just watch you know just just watching him and I on the other hand train all the time and I feel like I completely plateaued and it's incredibly hard to put any muscle on I'm in my late 40s is that can be much worse you know in my 60s and 70s what's the what does the science say it's very gradual so generally speaking and there's not much you could do let's say hormonally men will generally lose one percent or so of testosterone after about the age of 40. these are averages different people have genetics is going to enter into that and other factors women it's even more pronounced because women when they go through menopause whose estrogen estrogen basically is considered to be the male the female component of testosterone to facilitate muscle building at least there's some good evidence to indicate that and the reductions in estrogen are huge so it's a tenfold reduction in estrogen production for women which compromises their ability to build muscle even more so that in itself is going to be a factor chronic inflammatory effects so the body produces these inflammatory cytokines as people get older on a chronic basis and um injuries can affect that conditions such as osteoarthritis can be involved so there's just a multitude of factors when you age that are kind of working against you and it sounds like particularly as a woman going through menopause so there's like a big shift then in your ability to maintain or grow muscles after menopause compared to before is that did I understand that right the men are going to have a more gradual decline in testosterone let's say from the age of 40 you just start seeing a shift it does seem to accelerate though it when you get into your when it gets into is 70s plus uh can have even a greater downward uh linear trajectory where women over a period of several years during menopause really have this drastic drop in estrogen and uh and that seemingly uh does again compromise to a greater extent muscle building ability but as I said uh it does not mean you can't build muscle both men and women uh equally can achieve very uh good gains well I think you've convinced everybody your muscles are really important um you've scared us all with this idea that your ability to hold on to them uh gets worse and worse over time I'd love to like start to talk about the actionable side about this as sort of because I think everybody says we're like well I would like to have more bustles I don't want to fall over and break my hip I want to be able to stand up and get out of my my chair um just before we go into the details like I just want to start at the highest level because the terminology around exercise can be very scary for non-experts and quite confusing so you've generally talked about resistance training a lot of people talk about cardio and we have this question at the beginning I'd love just to understand because I think for a lot of people they'll be like well my doctor just tells me I should do more exercise can you help me to understand this difference between like lifting something heavy and like going out for a run or or a cycle cardio uh implies that you're involving the cardio rest Victoria system where it's oxygen dependent uh so it's just you're not you're generally training in a manner that's sub-maximal where you can re you can continue doing it over very long periods of time resistance training you're going to be limited you're not going to be able to lift weights continuously for 20 minutes I mean then then you're essentially doing cardiovascular exercise so you know outside of a minute 90 seconds a little more it ceases to be a resistance training and you start entering into cardiovascular where it becomes more of an aerobic Endeavor where your body utilizes oxygen now we've heard lots of people talk about the benefits of cardio that this does have lots of health benefits in sort of long-term studies but it sounds like it's not giving you the muscle supporting benefits you've been talking about could you just help us to unpack that and I think you said something quite interest in the beginning that on balance you actually think you know if you had a if I've got 20 minutes to decide what I'm going to do that actually the resistance if I had to do one or the other the resistance is actually going to be better for my health than the cardio which I think for a lot of people would be really surprised could you help to explain that yeah sure um when you we've kind of touched on this before but when you're doing cardiovascular exercise you are not challenging the muscles substantially uh to to need to develop and to increase their strength all they need to do again the body is looking for survival if your cardio consists of walking a couple of miles a day uh the body will adapt to be able to do that but that's a very low bar as far as the muscle needed to accomplish that um whereas if you're lifting weights the body is going to perceive a threat to its survival and it's going to uh substantially increase its muscle size and strength the neural various neural factors as well to uh to accommodate those types of changes that happen over time to and to consistently be able to uh to carry out those functions because the body's looking forward you know if you're if you're walking well the body thinks you're going to need to walk on a regular basis until you until you stop doing that and then the body starts over a period of time and then the body regresses and says all right now we don't need to do this anymore strength gains can happen within a few weeks uh you know two three weeks you will start to get hypertrophy which is the building of muscle tissue uh increases in muscle size usually uh start to become evident in about a month or so uh four weeks now again it depends upon what you're doing and genetics to a certain extent you're going to enter into this uh but those are General I would say General guidelines this is quite nice right just a few weeks you're saying you'll get the benefit it's nice many of the things we do I think in our life that are supposed to help our long-term Health you don't really and we see this for example even with your microbiome you know it might take you three to six months before you really start to see any shift so there's actually a very fast adaptation I think compared to to many of the the things that I've heard people talk to us about so I think everybody's gonna listen to the same so okay what is it that I I should be doing and so um I'd love it if you could uh talk a little bit about the type of exercises that people could be doing and what's I guess best in terms of this um strength training there's a lot of muscles in my body do I need somehow to be doing like an exercise for each of my muscles or if I'm worried about my hip do I just worry about my hips like what should people be thinking about what required in order to get these benefits you're describing so you know these are questions that always are individual specific but I can give you a general recommendations is that you should be doing overall training the whole musculature uh if you're looking just for let's say no specific issues you just want to get healthier uh you should be training the major muscles of the body uh you generally should be uh resistance training a minimum of twice a week again that's a bare minimum um and depending upon how you're structuring it there can be other guidelines there but let's just go with the minimum of twice a week and you should look if you're looking for time efficiency and I I will say this two half hour sessions a week can give you very potent gains um you're not going to step on stage as a bodybuilder I think I've missed that boat already Brad but from a functional standpoint from a health standpoint from even just look certainly looking better you can achieve like literally one hour a week you don't want to do it all in one session uh you'd be better off splitting that up until let's say two half hour sessions but I'd say to bare minimum that can give you good gain decent gains and if you want a little better gains you know maybe three or three days a week and doing 45 minute sessions so even the time there's ways of time saving you can do uh what are called supersets and other types of techniques where you can reduce rest time between the exercises and Achieve time efficiency so again working the major muscles think of the chest muscles the shoulder muscles the back muscles the quadriceps the glutes people a lot of times will function or focus on bicep curls and tricep press Downs well you get substantial involvement of those muscles when you're doing uh rows and press rows and presses so um literally doing minimalist type routines that involve these multi-drawn exercises can work the total musculature again not to the extent that you're going to be stepping on stage but most people as you point out are not looking to be bodybuilders I do a lot of consultations with Elite level athletes and bodybuilders and the recommendations for them are going to be much different you need to be much more not only disciplined and and um conscious of your routine but you need to be focusing on a lot more scientific principles when it gets to that level but a very basic routine can achieve very very potent effects from a health health and fitness standpoint I think that's really it's really exciting and look Brad I know you used to be a bodybuilder and a personal trainer so I'm going to assume that you enjoyed the exercise and that you enjoyed sort of like the the physique that you were were building um but there are a lot of people out there who ask a lot of the questions um that uh I'd like to go through now who uh aren't regularly in the gym or and I would myself in this category don't actually get a lot of pleasure from it so I do the exercise but I'm not really having a lot of fun in the exercise I feel very good afterwards that I've done it in part because it's done but but I would be really interested maybe to to start with a question that came out quite a um a few times which is um we had quite a few listeners saying they feel really intimidated by their local gym and the idea of um getting started in this idea of strength training what would do you have any advice for someone who's listening to this and saying like wow okay I'm really convinced this is important I have to go and do this but you know I'm I I I'm really not sure how to um to get going yeah so the most important thing is making sure you have a good idea you of what you're doing I would say it is a very generally a very good thing to find a qualified personal trainer if possible there's going to be an expense to that but take several sessions just to get a feel for the what you should be doing you don't have to stay with the trainer uh for long periods of time but I would say at least several initiation sessions most gyms when you go to go there give a one free session with a personal trainer that can be a start but usually people need several sessions to get a feel for for what they're supposed to be doing uh if the money's an issue there um get it there's plenty of videos online that they can look up and so you can for free you can go online but I mean if you're you know look for qualified people that's what I would say and uh uh make sure you know what you're doing and then map out a plant the the most important thing is to have a plan there's an old adage Chinese adage that says those who fail to plan plan to fail adherence of course is the most important factor so you need to be regimented you need to commit to a couple days a week minimum like I said uh and ultimately it should be like brushing your teeth if you just commit to that schedule where you're doing it on this regimented basis try I would say if possible pick regimented days that uh where you go in you know you're going to be going in and just do it and if you keep doing it over a period of a couple months it becomes habit uh and um I would say when you're starting out just repeat the same workouts over and over don't try to get involved in a lot of variety you just want to make the muscles learn movement patterns so that's a basic mode of learning principle is to continue to do something over and over until you master It generally speaking free weights have certain benefits over uh over machines but you asked me about how when someone is starting out I think that as a general rule particularly you know if you're with a personal trainer that's fine then then he can instruct you or she can instruct you but if you're just going into a gym on your own there's a greater chance of injury if you don't know what you're doing with free weights than there is with machine I'd like to share something exciting back in March 2022 we started this podcast to uncover how the latest research can help us live longer and healthier lives we've spoken to Leading scientists around the world doing amazing research and across hundreds of hours of conversations they've revealed key insights that can help you to improve your health if you don't have hundreds of hours to spare no need to worry at the request of many of you our team has created a guide that contains 10 of the most impactful discoveries from the podcast that you can apply to your life and you can get it for free simply go to zoe.com free guide or click the link in the show notes and do let me know what you think of it okay back to the show we had quite a few questions sort of in the same same position from women saying that they felt like the the um the weight section in their gym felt very intimidating so they weren't necessarily people who haven't not done any exercise but it feels like quite an intimidating place to be is that is that where you need to be if you want to do this resistance training and we had some questions around things like Pilates and yoga and to what extent you know how well do they work versus um sort of lifting heavy weights to get this resistance that you're talking about like I said you don't necessarily have to uh to use them and I would say that the decrease in um this is I think somewhat arguable but the decrease that you'd get is just not going to be practically meaningful for most people so you can continue just to use machines and have uh and get make very good gains now when it comes to your point about yoga or um Pilates generally speaking uh they do not they are not sufficient to get you the same type of results that you wouldn't resistance training they just are not challenging to the muscles to the point where they cause optimal development of the musculature so I think they're kind of on a we look at it on a spectrum of cardiovascular exercise to free weights and they're kind of in the middle there that it's they they would be better than doing just cardio and I saw you write this great paper about light coal I think something like no time to trade which is a great because most scientific papers have titles that are really quite boring so I thought this was this is pretty I was immediately uh my eyes picked up so imagine that you said to you know someone says you I have literally 15 minutes in my individual session to exercise Brad um you know I've done some exercise before so it's not the first time I've ever done it but I've only got 15 minutes that I'm gonna do what would you what we should tell and I understand that it's different between people but what would be what would be the basis of what you'd be telling them to do let's say they're they're at home if time is a barrier focus on pressing and Rowing type movements or pulling movements which can generally be a row those are the common movement patterns and then what is called a hip hinge for the lower body so the three basic movement patterns so a press and generally you'd want to do a press for the chest area and a press for the shoulders so there's two pressing movements you generally want to do two pulling movements which can be rowing type movements if you have access to like a lat pull down in the gym that's another pulling movement and then your hip hinge type movements like squats you could do a leg press as a hip hinge movement which is a machine based movement uh squats and lunges can require a lot of balance and coordination and for people just starting out certainly older people can have issues with that 15 minutes isn't a lot of time but you could do let's say Focus one day on your uh Squat and a uh push him and a chest press the next time you come in you do a lunge and another movement a bit like the same thing you said about actually how little time you need to do to really make a difference again you're not describing like an incredibly complex set of 25 different exercises you have to do in order to get any benefit you're saying that these core exercises is is working out quite a lot of different muscles and so this again it this is sort of an achievable first step for people that doesn't involve um you know the same complexity maybe of being able to participate in a sport correct I'd love to talk about the weight that's involved because this is something that I hear so many different people um say different things um including that you know unless you're using a very heavy weight and pushing yourself for the extreme then none of this really matters and I think for a lot of people you know that's a bit um scary or they're worried about injuries I know again this is something that you've studied what is the the way to think about the weights that you're using in terms of getting these benefits yeah so this is something that's been very eye-opening to me and it goes against what uh when I was an up-and-coming exercise science student that we've been taught but uh you can use relatively very light weights that you can lift let's say 30 to 40 times and Achieve similar muscle growth as you would lifting five to eight times so a heavy weight that you're lifting five to eight times provided that you are lifting with a high degree of effort that you are the last few repetitions are challenging to to complete um now that said from a strength standpoint you do get somewhat better strength gains with the heavier load but even that um the difference between the strength is not anywhere near what uh people generally would think so it's I would say that uh you yes if your goal is to maximize strength some heavier loading is needed but for most people I think they will get the functional uh transfer of strength from the light loads that would be sufficient to carry out their activities of daily living that it's not going to substantially compromise their um number one their ability to to do their functional tasks and and really to have any meaningful effect on their lives so just just to make sure I I I've got there I I think you're saying it doesn't really matter how heavy the weight is provided that you're doing the exercise often enough that uh that it starts to get like hard if you're if you're above let's say 40 repetitions then which is a lot I mean if you're lifting 40 repetitions that's almost a two minute uh set that the set's gonna be just it's going to start to become a cardiovascular Endeavor so uh again when you're most people would get very bored doing weight slide in that but I mean we're talking very light loads that you just keep lifting yeah the last few repetitions as long as you are challenging the muscles to the point where you're it becomes very difficult to lift on the last few repetitions uh the gains are relatively similar certainly for hypertrophy they're going to be almost identical that's really interesting I've said a personal level I think I always find it easier when it's quite heavy since I don't really like doing anything that's hard so if it's heavy that it's hard for a short period of time whereas it's a bit less heavy it's still quite hard for longer and I don't know whether this is just me but I personally feel like actually it's it's easier to do something that's really heavy a few times and something that's quite heavy a lot of times I don't know if that even makes any sense as I describe it you've read yeah I wouldn't use the term easier but it is less onerous it is worse okay well that's onerous because like you said you're having both of them are going to produce a um discomfort but you're just having a discomfort for a shorter period of time and what I would say is the discomfort with uh lighter loads comes from what's called acidosis so that's a buildup of acids within the muscles and that you get a real intense burn where you don't to the same extent with the with the heavier loads but that said a lot of people particularly as people age do not have the ability ability to tolerate heavy loads their joints so they develop osteoarthritis and other joint related conditions which can impair their ability to use heavier loads and in that case lighter roads is is an option we had a lot of questions from our community about people saying I've got joint mobility issues or some other sort of injuries disabilities um and does that mean that therefore I can't do any of this strength because you know I don't think I could lift some really big heavy heavy weight the using lighter loads becomes a viable alternative under those scenarios now remember too if time efficiency is something you're looking for doing lighter loads is going to prolong the length of your session so if you're going to do let's say 30 repetitions versus doing 10 repetitions each set is taking roughly three times as long decisions have to be made based upon lifestyle factors and your message to people who are in this group are saying like I've got these you know joint mobility issues or or whatever a lot of whom I think have tended people I have to give up doing all of this is actually you you shouldn't get this up and the health benefits are still really high even if potentially you're having to adjust a bit and maybe this thing is not as heavy as it might be otherwise but actually it's not too late for people like this to get to get the benefit from this resistance training correct so I think that's very empowering I'd like to ask one one final question from um uh question uh from our listeners we had a lot of questions about menopause and I think a lot of people concerned around um how post-menopause can affect um bone density and wondering like uh and you've you've then described further concerns I think about how loss of estrogen might affect your ability to control your your muscles that I at least hadn't heard of before and say is there anything specifically um that um that they should be doing um you know the best exercises in that in that situation if that's what they're concerned about yeah so estrogen is osteoprotective meaning that it protects bones it helps to build bones uh and the loss of estrogen causes A disruption in that balance and the bone building balance and causes a loss of bone in women uh it's been a while since I've looked at the stats but I would assume they haven't changed much uh roughly 80 percent of the cases of osteoporosis which is a lesser bone Beyond a certain point and it's considered where there's a severe risk or osteoporosis by the way means porous bone where actually there are holes within the bones uh anyway uh there's generally again resistance training is the primary uh intervention that will be helpful to avoid bone loss uh or or at least to reverse somewhat reverse the effects of bone bone loss uh and this primary sites of uh of bone loss or osteoporosis or at the wrist at the spine and at the femur at the hip area in general and thus doing as I mentioned earlier those types the movements I talked about are the structural type movements your presses your rows and your hip hinge movements are ideal doesn't mean other exercises aren't effective as well but the ones I mentioned really put load those areas substantially and that will help to offset those losses of bone and to some extent it can help to reverse those effects and presumably the same advice you've been given else swear which is even a couple of sessions a week will really make a a difference tell me imagine at this point that somebody listening to this says well I've got more time I'm actually not time um restricted and I want to do this what but it's not the only thing I want to do in my life right like I'm doing this for my health what would be the number of times a week that ideally they should be doing these sorts of resistance training does have to be every day for the average individual I would say three sessions a week or 45 minutes to an hour would would kind of when I say maximize it will give you very robust gains uh to the point that I think the vast majority of individuals would be very happy from both the health standpoint and also a uh aesthetic standpoint because that's where you really can start to make substantial gains look even as people get older many still want uh aesthetic gains and when you're doing these minimalist routines the amount uh it's generally more specific to strength than it is to hypertrophy you're going to compromise muscle growth to a greater extent than you do muscle strength so Brad I have one more question just listen to all of this I think you've done this incredibly powerful pitch for resistance training and how important it is um so I guess I'm left with the question around what about this like cardio non-resistance exercise on top like how important is that and what would you be saying to people that they um sort of really should be laying on top if again this is a sort of long-term Health uh perspective rather than anything else yeah it's very important um so again the uh if you're asking me if you had to choose one gun to your head no one necessarily has to choose one and you can fit cardio into your life you don't have to do walk on the treadmill or do high intensity interval training Etc um you can just walk uh I mean step so like if you focus there's nothing necessarily magical about ten thousand steps a day that's kind of been a but it's a nice default I think that's a generally a good goal if you can achieve let's say ten thousand steps a day there is some compelling evidence that that does confer health related benefits doesn't mean you have to hit that Target every day these aren't hard cutoffs but you want to try to get fit that into your lifestyle and yeah cardiovascular exercise so resistance training itself will help to promote cardiovascular benefits your minimalist routines will not again doing more resistance training will get you more cardiovascular benefits but anyway you can stretch sure different uh different types of cardio routines to fit in with your lifestyle I keep harping on this but it Bears repeating that um adherence is the most important uh uh thing the the most important quality in a routine is adherence and if you don't build adherence or what is important to someone into their routine it's not going to matter Brad I think this has been incredibly helpful and interesting I would love to try and do a summary this is what we always try and do in the podcast and please keep me honest so if I get anything wrong and what has been um fairly complicated then then then please adjust so I think we started off by just explaining that muscles are really important and there's this thing called sarcopenia which is the loss of muscles as you age which is not inevitable but actually is a thing that for most of us is probably going to take away um the pleasure in our life whether that's you know losing the freedom to get out of our chair and ended up having to be in a care home or falling over and fracturing our hip and we know that that is often the really fast route unfortunately to um you know to to end of life um and then in order to to fight against this we're in this this miserable world where our body thinks there's no calories and it's constantly trying to shrink our muscles so the only thing we can do is this resistance training where we're sort of strengthening it by pushing these forces against and there are various ways that you can achieve this but it sounds like you know weight training from is sort of the um the optimal um solution you're proposing although you can get part of this through uh other things like Pilates or or or yoga that sadly it gets harder to gain muscle as you age so you are fighting against this harder as we as we get older um and for men there's a sort of slow decline for women it sounds like this it's accelerated decline around um menopause and that in both cases therefore it's just harder to manage those muscles but there is some really good news which is actually a surprisingly small amount of exercise each week can have protein Gates you said two half hour sessions can give you a really big gain in your muscle and you also said that you've done this uh peer-reviewed paper showing that people aged over 75 in just 8 to 12 weeks could like dramatically increase their um their strength so there is this very positive story I think about what you can do and it's a lot less than I think most people were expecting um that ultimately you think if you had to choose between resistance and cardio you didn't want to be forced but you're like okay actually resistance is the most um uh important thing and that there's quite a lot of flexibility I think a strong push here that if you've never had a trainer that you should really try and get someone to help for yourself to give you this this advice but there are sort of three key types of exercises I think you talked about pressing talked about pull and you talked about this hip hinge which is sort of squats or lunges or deadlifts and interesting if you're doing those three and you're worried about um um osteoporosis sort of rests your bone after menopause actually those are directly going to address um those areas which I think is really nice but I think for everybody interestingly that alone is going to get you a long way for um for this help that you don't have to lift an enormous weight in order to get any better of it and that interestingly you know you've changed your your view on this and actually you could go to much lighter weights and do it more often so if you do have you know joint mobility issues or other things that restrict you can still do this resistance training but you do need to keep doing it to the point that this is this is hard and we talked about the fact that I'm terrible at that so I'd rather do heavy for a short period of time and then lastly you said look you can add cardio and it's actually really simple like go for a walk and if you're hitting 10 000 steps a day then actually you're probably getting most of the way for that Health goal if you're combining it with the the resistance training and finally I think you said the most important thing is adherence so basically it's sticking to the routine none of this matters if you're going to do it for a week or a month you've got to find something that you can just keep doing as a permanent part of your of your lifestyle because that's what's going to deliver these these long-term benefits that's a perfect summary you could just kind of capsulize that you have a two-minute podcast and that's why well I'm not as credible as you are Brad so I just try to play back but thank you so much I think that is I think really interesting for people and I think we'll definitely like to follow up more I think in in helping people to understand how like the on wraps to this because I think what you're also describing is there's a lot of complexity uh in exactly what to do but I think most people will come away feeling like there's something really that can transform their health that is maybe more accessible than they might have thought thank you Brad for joining me on Zoe's science and nutrition today if you want to understand how to support your body with the best foods to give you many more active and healthy years then you may want to try Zoe's personalized nutrition program you can learn more and get 10 off by going to join zoe.com podcast as always I'm your host Jonathan Wolfe so is science and nutrition is produced by yellow hughins Martin Richard Willen and Tilly fulford see you next time foreign [Music]

Channel: ZOE

Views: 448,543

Keywords: zoe, zoe podcast, gut health, ultra processed foods, tim spector, gut health diet, ultra processed foods documentary, ultra processed food, exercise, brad schoenfeld, jonathan wolf, training, belly fat

Id: maV9BFrqmEg

Length: 48min 48sec (2928 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 19 2023